How to find a date when everyone is available

To find a date when everyone is available, list every candidate date, ask each person to mark all the dates they can make, and count. The date with a full count wins. If no date has a full count, a rule you set in advance decides. This works for an offsite, a dinner, a workshop or any event where the day matters more than the hour.

Step 1. List the candidate dates

Write down every date that could work for the event itself. Remove the ones ruled out by the venue, by holidays or by a key person you already know is away. Six to ten candidates is plenty.

Three things make a better list.

• Spread the weekdays. If every candidate is a Tuesday, the person who teaches on Tuesdays is out of all of them. Mix the days of the week.
• Spread the weeks. A week of leave removes five dates in a row. Candidates in two or three different weeks survive it.
• Write the weekday beside the date. "Thu, Nov 5" is harder to misread than "5/11", which means two different days depending on where the reader grew up.

Step 2. Ask for every date, not a favorite

Ask each person to mark all the dates they can make. If people name only their favorite, you learn one date per person and cannot see the overlap.

Give a deadline, and say what "can make it" means. For a full-day workshop it means the whole day. For a dinner it means the evening. A person who can come "after 3" is a yes for the dinner and a no for the workshop.

Here is a message you can adapt.

We are choosing a date for the team offsite (full day, in person).
Candidates: Tue Nov 3, Thu Nov 5, Tue Nov 10, Wed Nov 11.
Reply with EVERY date you could attend for the whole day, not only your favorite.
Please answer by Friday at noon. I will announce the date on Friday afternoon.

How to ask a group when we can meet has more wording you can copy, including a reminder.

Step 3. Count

Put the answers in a table, one row per date.

Thursday, November 5 has all five, so that is the date.

Keep an empty cell different from a missing answer. Chi answered and cannot make November 3. A person who has not replied yet is unknown, not unavailable. Mark those rows with a question mark until the deadline, then chase them once.

Step 4. Decide what to do when no date has everyone

With more than a handful of people, a full count is rare. Decide the rule before you look at the answers, so the choice is not personal.

• Name the people who must attend. Drop every date that one of them cannot make.
• Take the highest count among the dates that remain.
• Break a tie with the earlier date, or with the date the must-attend people prefer.
• Tell the people who cannot come before you announce, and say what they will get instead.

The rule at work

Suppose the same five people answer differently, and Dev is the facilitator who must attend.

No date has all five. Three dates tie on four. The rule settles it in three moves. Dev cannot make November 3, so that date goes. November 5 and November 10 remain, tied on four. The earlier date wins, so the offsite is Thursday, November 5. Ben is the one person who cannot come, and he hears it from the organizer before the announcement.

Without the rule, the same table starts an argument about whose absence matters least. With it, the answer takes a minute and nobody has to make that case.

Step 5. Lock the date, then find the hour

Announce the date in the place you asked, and put a hold on calendars the same day. The longer the gap between the poll and the invite, the more answers go stale.

The offsite is Thursday, November 5, full day.
Four of five can attend. Ben, I will send you the notes and set up a catch-up.
A calendar hold is on its way. Details on the room will follow.

If the hour is also open, run a second round for that day only. That round is a question of times, and the method is in when to meet: find a time that works for everyone.

Cases the simple count does not cover

Events that span several days

For a two-day retreat, the candidates are date ranges, not single dates. List each range as one row, such as "Tue Nov 3 to Wed Nov 4". A person is a yes only if they can make every day of the range. Do not count single days and hope two good ones turn out to be neighbors.

"Maybe" answers

Some people will say "probably" or "if I can move something". Record it as a third value, and count it as a no when you compare dates. Then use it as a tie-break. If two dates tie on firm answers, the one with more maybes is the better bet. Ask the maybes to confirm before you announce.

People in other time zones

A date is not the same day everywhere. An event at 9:00 on Thursday in London is still Thursday in New York, but an event at 18:00 on Thursday in San Francisco is already Friday in Tokyo. For an in-person event this does not matter. For a remote one, name the hours and the zone beside each candidate date, so people answer for the day they will live through.

Large groups

As a rule of thumb, past twenty or so people a date with everyone is unlikely, and the question changes. You are now looking for the date with the most people, or the date that all the essential people can make. Say so in the ask. People answer more honestly when they know that one "no" will not sink the event.

Answers that change

Plans move between the ask and the deadline. Let people update their answer, and count once, after the deadline. A count made early and never refreshed is a common cause of an announcement followed by an apology.

Common mistakes

• Asking an open question. "When is everyone free in November?" gets a few vague replies. A list of dates gets marks you can count.
• Counting in your head. Replies in a thread arrive in different shapes. Put them in a table, even a rough one.
• Letting the first replies decide. Early answers pull the thread toward one date before the quiet people have spoken. Wait for the deadline.
• Treating silence as a yes. No answer is an unknown. Chase it or leave that person out of the count, and say which you did.
• Polling again after the result. If someone objects after the announcement, apply the rule you set. Reopening the question teaches the group that the deadline was not real.
• Waiting to book. The date is settled only when the room and the calendars hold it.

Where to collect the answers

The method needs one place where every answer lands. Which place depends on the group.

• A thread or an email chain. Fine for up to five or six people. You copy the replies into a table yourself. Past that size, replies arrive in too many shapes to count by eye.
• A shared spreadsheet. Put the dates down the side and a column per person, like the table in step 3. Each person fills in their own column. Everyone can see the count form, and nobody has to transcribe anything. The cost is that people can see, and be swayed by, each other's answers.
• A poll of dates. A poll tool lists the candidates and lets each person tick the ones that work, then counts for you. This is the better choice for a large group or for people in several organizations. When 2 Meet vs Doodle explains when a poll of options beats a grid.

Whichever you pick, name it in the ask. Answers split between a thread and a spreadsheet are two half counts.

Common questions

How many candidate dates should I offer?

As a rule of thumb, six to ten suits most groups. Fewer than four and one person's holiday can remove every option. More than ten and people skim the list and miss dates they could have made.

How far ahead should the dates be?

Far enough that calendars are still open, and near enough that answers stay true. For a team meeting day, two to four weeks out is a reasonable range. For an event that needs travel, look further ahead and expect to confirm the answers again closer to the day.

What if the only full-count date is the worst one for the event?

Then the count is not the only rule, and you should have said so in step 4. If the venue costs more on that date, or it falls the day before a deadline, drop it from the candidate list before you ask. A date you would not use should never be on the list.

Should people see each other's answers?

Open answers are quicker and let people adjust. "I could move my dentist if that gets us all five" is a useful thing to learn. Hidden answers stop the group from following the first few replies. For a team that trusts each other, open is fine.

A checklist before you send the ask

• The event has a name, a length and a place or a format.
• The list has six to ten candidate dates, with weekdays written out.
• Dates that the venue or a must-attend person rules out are gone.
• The ask says "mark every date you can make".
• There is a deadline for answers, and a time when you will announce.
• You have written down who must attend and how you will break a tie.
• You know where the answers will be collected, and it is one place.

Doing both rounds in Slack

Meeting Mouse is built for the second round and can cover both when the candidate dates fall within the next three weeks, which is as far ahead as its date list goes. It is a Slack app. Running /meet with a title opens a form for the dates, a daily window of hours and a slot length. A poll offers up to 14 dates, so people mark the hours they are free on each candidate date, in their own time zone. The channel message then shows who is free when and ranks the best times by headcount. A date whose slots show everyone free is a date when the group is available.

The answer form also has an "I can't make any of these" choice, so a firm no is recorded as an answer and not left as silence.

It asks for hours, not whole days, so for a pure date question with no times, the table above is simpler. It also reaches only the people in the Slack channel. For guests outside your workspace, use a web tool with a link. When to meet app: what to look for lists what to check, and you can see how Meeting Mouse works on the homepage.